The inequality of the “progressive income tax”

A great article by Kip Hagopian at The Hoover Institution, Stanford University. A Smash Mouth must read.

Basically, it is a parable about three brothers, with equal talents, who made wildly disparate incomes based solely upon the amount of effort each put into identical jobs, and upon what those brothers chose to do with their money after they earned it. Course the guy who worked the hardest and saved was forced to pay the most by the other two. But go read it.

I’ll be honest, back in Virginia I was never exposed to people on welfare (except my clients, and I did not have much personal interaction with them). Out here in Vegas, living in a lower-income, more transient neighborhood, I rub shoulders with many who are gaming the system. One neighbor is on disability but working and being paid under the table so it won’t cut down on the amount of money he gets for being “disabled” and “unable to work.” Another works summers and then collects unemployment the rest of the year. And he lets his 30-year-old son live with him. The son is on unemployment and actively seeks to submarine required job interviews because he does not want to work. And he wonders why he can’t find a chick.

Our system is fucked up and getting worse and worse and worse. I’ll be honest, I’m getting depressed. The Tea Party temporarily fired up conservatives, but we won one election and everybody thinks that is the end of it, we won. Meanwhile, back in Wisconsin and Ohio and Michigan and the federal government, progressives are fighting back. It is a long, hard war, and Tea Partiers and conservatives view it as just a single months long campaign. As long as we have those on the dole rioting when their benefits are trimmed back or their right to skull fuck us collectively bargain against we the tax payers, while the silent majority acquiesce when their rates are raised, the system will only get worse.

3 responses to “The inequality of the “progressive income tax””

“The son is on unemployment and actively seeks to submarine required job interviews because he does not want to work. And he wonders why he can’t find a chick. ”
May those two brain cells wandering around the inside of his head one day meet… and reproduce.
Welfare rorters are a topic here in Oz and the UK as well. And of course the usual ‘defenders’ of the free-riding demographic have been quick to protest.

People have been gaming the welfare system since it was first implemented. And most of the time, they have help from the Welfare office administrators. A lot of public entitlement programs are gamed. It’s just human nature, ( Ohhh…free stuff), and will be next to impossible to stop.

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